Literary Love Letters and Other Stories by Robert Herrick

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"Bother the inspiration!" groaned Clayton. "I wish I were a blacksmith, or
a sailor, or something honest. I feel like a hypocrite. I have started out
at a pace that I can't keep up!"

Miss Marston felt complimented by this apparent confidence. If she had had
experience in that kind of nature, she would have understood how
indifferent Clayton was to her personally. He would have made the same
confession to the birds, if they had happened to produce the same
irritation in his mind.

"They all say your work is so brilliant," she said, soothingly.

"Thunder!" he commented. "I wish they would not say anything kind and
pleasant and cheap. At college they praised my verses, and the theatres
stole my music for the Pudding play, and the girls giggled over my
sketches. And now, at twenty-six, I don't know whether I want to fiddle,
or to write an epic, or to model, or to paint. I am a victim of every
artistic impulse."

"I know what you should do," she said, wisely, when they had reached a
shady spot and were cooling themselves.

"Smoke?" queried Clayton, quizzically.

"You ought to marry!"

"That's every woman's great solution, great panacea," he replied,
contemptuously.

"It would steady you and make you work."

"No," he replied, thoughtfully, "not unless she were poor, and in that
case it would be from the frying-pan into the fire!"

"You should work," she went on, more courageously. "And a wife would give
you inspiration and sympathy."

"I have had too much of the last already," he sighed. "And it's better not
to have it all of one sort. After awhile a woman doesn't produce pleasant
or profitable reactions in my soul. Yes, I know," he added, as he noticed
her look of wonderment, "I am selfish and supremely egotistical. Every
artist is; his only lookout, however, should be that his surroundings
don't become stale. Or, if you prefer to put it more humanely, an artist
isn't fit to marry; it's criminal for him to marry and break a woman's
heart."

After this heroic confession he paused to smoke. "Besides, no woman whom I
ever knew really understands art and the ends which the artist is after.
She has the temperament, a superficial appreciation and interest, but she
hasn't the stimulus of insight. She's got the nerves, but not the head."

"But you just said that you had had too much sympathy and molly-coddling."

"Did I? Well, I was wrong. I need a lot, and I don't care how idiotic. It
makes me courageous to have even a child approve. I suppose that shows how
closely we human animals are linked together. We have got to have the
consent of the world, or at any rate a small part of it, to believe
ourselves sane. So I need the chorus of patrons, admiring friends, kind
women, etc., while I play the Protagonist, to tell me that I am all right,
to go ahead. Do you suppose any one woman would be enough? What a great
posture for an arm!" His sudden exclamation was called out by the attitude
that Miss Marston had unconsciously assumed in the eagerness of her
interest. She had thrown her hand over a ledge above them, and was leaning
lightly upon it. The loose muslin sleeve had fallen back, revealing a
pretty, delicately rounded arm, not to be suspected from her slight
figure. Clayton quickly squirmed a little nearer, and touching the arm
with an artist's instinct, brought out still more the fresh white flesh
and the delicate veining.

"Don't move. That would be superb in marble!" Miss Marston blushed
painfully.

"How strange you are," she murmured, as she rose. "You just said that you
had given up modelling, or I would let you model my arm in order to give
you something to do. You should try to stick to something."

"Don't be trite," laughed Clayton, "and don't make me consistent. You will
keep yourself breathless if you try that!"

"I know what you need," she said, persistently unmindful of his
admonition. "You need the spur. It doesn't make so much difference _what_
you do--you're clever enough."

"'Truth from the mouths of babes----'"

"I am not a babe." She replied to his mocking, literally. "Even if I am
stupid and commonplace, I may have intuitions like other women."

"Which lead you to think that it's all chance whether Raphael paints or
plays on the piano. Well, I don't know that you are so absurd. That's my
theory: an artist is a fund of concentrated, undistributed energy that has
any number of possible outlets, but selects one. Most of us are artists,
but we take so many outlets that the hogshead becomes empty by leaking.
Which shall it be? Shall we toss up a penny?"

"Painting," said Miss Marston, decisively. "You must stick to that."

"How did you arrive at that conclusion--have you observed my work?"

"No! I'll let you know some time, but now you must go to work. Come!" She
rose, as if to go down to the lodge that instant. Clayton, without feeling
the absurdity of the comedy, rose docilely and followed her down the path
for some distance. He seemed completely dominated by the sudden enthusiasm
and will that chance had flung him.

"There's no such blessed hurry," he remarked at last, when the first
excitement had evanesced. "The light will be too bad for work by the time
we reach Bar Harbor. Let's rest here in this dark nook, and talk it all
over."

Clayton was always abnormally eager to talk over anything. Much of his
artistic energy had trickled away in elusive snatches of talk. "Come," he
exclaimed, enthusiastically, "I have it. I will begin a great work--a
modern Magdalen or something of that sort. We can use you in just that
posture, kneeling before a rock with outstretched hands, and head turned
away. We will make everything of the hands and arms!"

Miss Marston blushed her slow, unaccustomed blush. At first sight it
pleased her to think that she had become so much a part of this
interesting young man's plans, but in a moment she laughed calmly at the
frank desire he expressed to leave out her face, and the characteristic
indifference he had shown in suggesting negligently such a subject.

"All right. I am willing to be of any service. But you will have to make
use of the early hours. I teach the children at nine."

"Splendid!" he replied, as the vista of a new era of righteousness dawned
upon him. "We shall have the fresh morning light, and the cool and the
beauty of the day. And I shall have plenty of time to loaf, too."

"No, you mustn't loaf. You will find me a hard task-mistress!"

III

True to her word, Miss Marston rapped at the door of the studio promptly
at six the next morning. She smiled fearfully, and finding no response,
tried stones at the windows above. She kept saying to herself, to keep up
her courage: "He won't think about me, and I am too old to care, anyway."
Soon a head appeared, and Clayton called out, in a sleepy voice:

"I dreamt it was all a joke; but wait a bit, and we will talk it over."

Miss Marston entered the untidy studio, where the _debris_ of a month's
fruitless efforts strewed the floor. Bits of clay and carving-tools,
canvases hurled face downward in disgust and covered with paint-rags, lay
scattered about. She tip-toed around, carefully raising her skirt, and
examined everything. Finally, discovering an alcohol-lamp and a coffee-
pot, she prepared some coffee, and when Clayton appeared--a somewhat
dishevelled god--he found her hunting for biscuit.

"You can't make an artist of me at six in the morning," he growled.

In sudden inspiration, Miss Marston threw open the upper half of the door
and admitted a straight pathway of warm sun that led across the water just
rippling at their feet. The hills behind the steep shore were dark with a
mysterious green and fresh with a heavy dew, and from the nooks in the
woods around them thrush was answering thrush. Miss Marston gave a sigh of
content. The warm, strong sunlight strengthened her and filled her wan
cheeks, as the sudden interest in the artist's life seemed to have
awakened once more the vigor of her feelings. She clasped her thin hands
and accepted both blessings. Clayton also revived. At first he leant
listlessly against the door-post, but as minute by minute he drank in the
air and the beauty and the hope, his weary frame dilated with incoming
sensations. "God, what beauty!" he murmured, and he accepted
unquestioningly the interference in his life brought by this woman just as
he accepted the gift of sunshine and desire.

"Come to work," said Miss Marston, at last.

"That's no go," he replied, "that subject we selected."

"I dare say you won't do much with it, but it will do as well as any other
for experiment and practice."

"I see that you want those arms preserved."

The little woman shrank into her shell for a moment: her lazy artist could
scatter insults as negligently as epigrams. Then she blazed out.

"Mr. Clayton, I didn't come here to be insulted."

Clayton, utterly surprised, opened his sleepy eyes in real alarm.

"Bless you, my dear Miss Marston, I can't insult anybody. I never mean
anything."

"Perhaps that's the trouble," replied Miss Marston, somewhat mollified.
But the sitting was hardly a success. Clayton wasted almost all his time
in improvising an easel and in preparing his brushes. Miss Marston had to
leave him just as he was ready to throw himself into his work. He was
discontented, and, instead of improving the good light and the long day,
he took a pipe and went away into the hills. The next morning he felt
curiously ashamed when Miss Marston, after examining the rough sketch on
the easel, said:

"Is that all?"

And this day he painted, but in a fit of gloomy disgust destroyed
everything. So it went on for a few weeks. Miss Marston was more regular
than an alarm-clock; sometimes she brought some work, but oftener she sat
vacantly watching the young man at work. Her only standard of
accomplishment was quantity. One day, when Clayton had industriously
employed a rainy afternoon in putting in the drapery for the figure, she
was so much pleased by the quantity of the work accomplished that she
praised him gleefully. Clayton, who was, as usual, in an ugly mood, cast
an utterly contemptuous look at her and then turned to his easel.

"You mustn't look at me like that," the woman said, almost frightened.

"Then don't jabber about my pictures."

Her lips quivered, but she was silent. She began to realize her position
of galley-slave, and welcomed with a dull joy the contempt and insults to
come.

One morning Clayton was not to be found. He did not appear during that
week, and at last Miss Marston determined to find him. She made an excuse
for a journey to Boston, and divining where Clayton could be found, she
sent him word at a certain favorite club that she wanted to see him. He
called at her modest hotel, dejected, listless, and somewhat shamefaced;
he found Miss Marston calm and commonplace as usual. But it was the calm
of a desperate resolve, won after painful hours, that he little
recognized. Her instinct to attach herself to this strange, unaccountable
creature, to make him effective to himself, had triumphed over her
prejudices. She humbled herself joyfully, recognizing a mission.

"Della said that I might presume on your escort home," she remarked dryly,
trembling for fear that she had exposed herself to some contemptuous
retort. One great attraction, however, in Clayton was that he never
expected the conventional. It did not occur to him as particularly absurd
that this woman, ten years his senior, should hunt him up in this fashion.
He took such eccentricities as a matter of course, and whatever the
circumstances or the conversation, found it all natural and reasonable.
Women did not fear him, but talked indiscreetly to him about all things.

"What's the use of keeping up this ridiculous farce about my work?" he
said, sadly. Then he sought for a conventional phrase. "Your unexpected
interest and enthusiasm in my poor attempts have been most kind, my dear
Miss Marston. But you must allow me to go to the dogs in my own fashion;
that's the inalienable right of every emancipated soul in these days." The
politeness and mockery of this little epigram stung the woman.

"Don't be brutal, as well as good for nothing," she said, bitterly.
"You're as low as if you took to drink or any other vice, and you know it.
I can't appreciate your fine ideas, perhaps, but I know you ought to do
something more than talk. You're terribly ambitious, but you're too weak
to do anything but talk. I don't care what you think about my
interference. I can make you work, and I will make you do something.
You know you need the whip, and if none of your pleasant friends will give
it to you, I can. Come!" she added, pleadingly.

"Jove!" exclaimed the young man, slowly, "I believe you're an awful trump.
I will go back."

On their return they scarcely spoke. Miss Marston divined that her
companion felt ashamed and awkward, and that his momentary enthusiasm had
evaporated under the influence of a long railroad ride. While they were
waiting for the steamer at the Mount Desert ferry, she said, as
negligently as she could, "I have telegraphed for a carriage, but you had
better walk up by yourself."

He nodded assent. "So you will supply the will for the machine, if I will
grind out the ideas. But it will never succeed," he added, gloomily. "Of
course I am greatly obliged and all that, and I will stick to it until
October for the sake of your interest." In answer she smiled with an air
of proprietorship.

One effect of this spree upon Clayton was that he took to landscape during
the hours that he had formerly loafed. He found some quiet bits of dell
with water, and planted his easel regularly every day. Sometimes he sat
dreaming or reading, but he felt an unaccustomed responsibility if, when
his mentor appeared with the children late in the afternoon, he hadn't
something to show for his day. She never attempted to criticise except as
to the amount performed, and she soon learned enough not to measure this
by the area of canvas. Although Clayton had abandoned the Magdalen in
utter disgust, Miss Marston persisted in the early morning sittings. She
made herself useful in preparing his coffee and in getting his canvas
ready. They rarely talked. Sometimes Clayton, in a spirit of deviltry,
would tease his mentor about their peculiar relationship, about herself,
or, worse than all, would run himself and say very true things about his
own imperfections. Then, on detecting the tears that would rise in the
tired, faded eyes of the woman he tortured, he would throw himself into
his work.

So the summer wore away and the brilliant September came. The unsanctified
crowds flitted to the mountains or the town, and the island and sea
resumed the air of free-hearted peace which was theirs by right. Clayton
worked still more out of doors on marines, attempting to grasp the
perplexing brilliancy that flooded everything.

"It's no use," he said, sadly, as he packed up his kit one evening in the
last of September. "I really don't know the first thing about color. I
couldn't exhibit a single thing I have done this entire summer."

"What's the real matter?" asked Miss Marston, with a desperate calm.

"Why, I have fooled about so much that I have lost a lot I learnt over
there in Paris."

"Why don't you get--get a teacher?"

Clayton laughed ironically. "I am pretty old to start in, especially as I
have just fifty dollars to my name, and a whole winter before me."

They returned silently. The next morning Miss Marston appeared at the
usual hour and made the coffee. After Clayton had finished his meagre
meal, she sat down shyly and looked at him.

"You've never interested yourself much in my plans, but I am going to tell
you some of them. I'm sick of living about like a neglected cat, and I am
going to New York to--to keep boarders." Her face grew very red. "They
will make a fuss, but I am ready to break with them all."

"So you, too, find dependence a burden?" commented Clayton, indifferently.

"You haven't taken much pains to know me," she replied. "And if I were a
man," she went on, with great scorn, "I would die before I would be
dependent!"

"Talking about insults--but an artist isn't a man," remarked Clayton,
philosophically smoking his pipe.

"I hate you when you're like that," Miss Marston remarked, with intense
bitterness.

"Then you must hate me pretty often! But continue with your plans. Don't
let our little differences in temperament disturb us."

"Well," she continued, "I have written to some friends who spend the
winters in New York, and out of them I think I shall find enough
boarders--enough to keep me from starving. And the house has a large upper
story with a north light." She stopped and peeped at him furtively.

"Oh," said Clayton, coolly, "and you're thinking that I would make a good
tenant."

"Exactly," assented Miss Marston, uncomfortably.

"And who will put up the tin: for you don't suppose that I am low enough
to live off you?"

"No," replied the woman, quietly. "I shouldn't allow that, though I was
not quite sure you would be unwilling. But you can borrow two or three
hundred dollars from your brother, and by the time that's gone you ought
to be earning something. You could join a class; the house isn't far from
those studios."

Clayton impulsively seized her arms and looked into her face. She was
startled and almost frightened.

"I believe," he began, but the words faded away.

"No, don't say it. You believe that I am in love with you, and do this to
keep you near me. Don't be quite such a brute, for you _are_ a brute, a
grasping, egotistical, intolerant brute." She smiled slightly. "But don't
think that I am such a fool as not to know how impossible _that_ is."

Clayton still held her in astonishment. "I think I was going to say that I
was in love with you."

"Oh, no," she laughed, sadly. "I am coffee and milk and bread and butter,
the 'stuff that dreams are made on.' You want some noble young woman--a
goddess, to make you over, to make you human. I only save you from the
poor-house."

IV

There followed a bitter two years for this strange couple. Clayton
borrowed a thousand dollars--a more convenient number to remember, he
said, than three hundred dollars--and induced a prominent artist "who
happens to know something," to take him into his crowded classes for a
year. He began with true grit to learn again what he had forgotten and
some things that he had never known. At the end of the year he felt that
he could go alone, and the artist agreed, adding, nonchalantly: "You may
get there; God knows; but you need loads of work."

Domestically, the life was monotonous. Clayton had abandoned his old
habits, finding it difficult to harmonize his present existence with his
clubs and his fashionable friends. Besides, he hoarded every cent and,
with Miss Marston's aid, wrung the utmost of existence out of the few
dollars he had left. Miss Marston's modest house was patronized by elderly
single ladies. It was situated on one of those uninteresting East Side
streets where you can walk a mile without remembering an individual stone.
The table, in food and conversation, was monotonous. In fact, Clayton
could not dream of a more inferior _milieu_ for the birth of the great
artist.

Miss Marston had fitted herself to suit his needs, and in submitting to
this difficult position felt that she was repaying a loan of a new life.
He was so curious, so free, so unusual, so fond of ideas, so entertaining,
even in his grim moods, that he made her stupid life over. She could enjoy
vicariously by feeling his intense interest in all living things. In
return, she learnt the exact time to bring him an attractive lunch, and
just where to place it so that it would catch his eye without calling out
a scowl of impatience. She made herself at home in his premises, so that
all friction was removed from the young artist's life. He made no
acknowledgment of her devotion, but he worked grimly, doggedly, with a
steadiness that he had never before known. Once, early in the first
winter, having to return to Boston on some slight business, he permitted
himself to be entrapped by old friends and lazed away a fortnight. On his
return Miss Marston noticed with a pang that this outing had done him
good; that he seemed to have more spirit, more vivaciousness, more ideas,
and more zest for his work. So, in a methodical fashion, she thought out
harmless dissipations for him. She induced him to take her to the opera,
even allowing him to think that it was done from pure charity to her.
Sunday walks in the picturesque nooks of New York--they both shunned the
Fifth Avenue promenade for different reasons--church music, interesting
novels, all the "fuel," as Clayton remarked, that she could find she piled
into his furnace. She made herself acquainted with the peculiar literature
that seemed to stimulate his imagination, and sometimes she read him
asleep in the evenings to save his overworked eyes. Her devotion he took
serenely, as a rule. During the second winter, however, after a slight
illness brought on by over-application, he seemed to have a thought upon
his mind that troubled him. One day he impatiently threw down his palette
and put his hands upon her shoulders.

"Little woman, why do you persist in using up your life on me?"

"I am gambling," she replied, evasively.

"What do you expect to get if you win?"

"A few contemptuous thanks; perhaps free tickets when you exhibit, or a
line in your biography. But seriously, Jack, don't you know women well
enough to understand how they enjoy drudging for someone who is powerful?"

"But even if I have any ability, which you can't tell, how do you enjoy
it? You can't appreciate a picture."

She smiled. "Don't bother yourself about me. I get my fun, as you say,
because you make me feel things I shouldn't otherwise. I suppose that's
the only pay you artists ever give those who slave for you?"

Such talks were rare. They experienced that physical and mental unity in
duality which comes to people who live and think and work together for a
common aim. They had not separated a day since that first visit to Boston.
The summer had been spent at a cheap boarding-house on Cape Ann, in order
that Clayton might sketch in company with the artist who had been teaching
him. Neither thought of conventionality; it was too late for that.

As the second year came to an end, the pressure of poverty began to be
felt. Clayton refused to make any efforts to sell his pictures. He eked
out his capital and went on. The end of his thousand came; he took to
feeding himself in his rooms. He sold his clothes, his watch, his books,
and at last the truck he had accumulated abroad. "More fuel for the fire,"
he said bitterly.

"I will lend you something," remarked Miss Marston.

"No, thanks," he said, shortly, and then added, with characteristic
brutality, "my body is worth a hundred. Stevens will give that for it,
which would cover the room-rent. And my brother will have to whistle for
his cash or take it out in paint and canvas."

She said nothing, for she had a scheme in reserve. She was content
meantime to see him pinched; it brought out the firmer qualities in the
man. Her own resources, moreover, were small, for the character of her
boarders had fallen. Unpleasant rumors had deprived her of the
unexceptionable set of middle-aged ladies with whom she had started, but
she had pursued her course unaltered. The reproach of her relatives, who
considered her disgraced, had been a sweet solace to her pride.

The rough struggle had told on them both. He had forgotten his delicate
habits, his nicety of dress. A cheap suit once in six months was all that
he could afford. His mind had become stolidly fixed, so that he did not
notice the gradual change. It was a grim fight! The elements were
relentless; day by day the pounding was harder, and the end of his
resistance seemed nearer. Although he was deeply discontented with his
work, he did not dare to think of ultimate failure, for it unnerved him
for several days. Miss Marston's quiet assumption, however, that it was
only a question of months, irritated him.

"God must have put the idea into your head that I am a genius," he would
mutter fiercely at her. "I never did, nor work of mine. You don't know
good from bad, anyway, and we may both be crazy." He buried his face in
his hands, overcome by the awfulness of failure. She put her arms about
his head.

"Well, we can stand it a little longer, and then----"

"And then?" he asked, grimly.

"Then," she looked at him significantly. They both understood. "Lieber
Gott," he murmured, "thou hast a soul." And he kissed her gently, as in
momentary love. She did not resist, but both were indifferent to passion,
so much their end absorbed them.

At last she insisted upon trying to sell some marines at the art stores.
She brought him back twenty-five dollars, and he did not suspect that she
was the patron. He looked at the money wistfully.

"I thought we should have a spree on the first money I earned. But it's
all fuel now."

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